by Darrel, Skye
“Oh shut up.”
She giggles, helping me push the cart to the checkout line, and I realize it’ll take serious muscle hauling everything to my car. Someone with a lot of testosterone would come in handy right about now.
The shop door opens with a chime.
A clerk behind the counter, a young woman, immediately fluffs her hair. I follow her gaze to a man who’s just walked in and my creep alarm kicks to high alert. He strikes me as beautiful and for some reason also repulsive.
I shield Cora with my arm on reflex.
He’s dressed in a dark suit that fits him like a second skin. His features are so perfect they seem unnatural. He looks about Asher’s age, slimmer than Asher, but just as tall, with the same intensity in his eyes—no, not the same.
Wrong somehow. Empty.
The clerk has a smitten face and sees only the beauty to him.
“That’s Verne Resnik.” Cora whispers with awe.
My blood turns to ice.
Resnik strolls up to me, his shining shoes clicking softly on the floor. He smiles and frowns and smiles again, as if he’s testing emotions to see how I would respond, but those eyes never change.
Selling houses, I learned to read eyes. People can hide their moods behind a straight face, but eyeballs are different. Like the subtle shifts when a person smiles from the heart, a flash of anger, that dull gaze of someone so bored they’re listening only to be polite.
Verne Resnik’s eyes are dead. There’s nothing there.
“Are you Natalie Whipple?” He extends a hand that looks soft and manicured. “The realty agent for Mr. Gatsby?”
I think he knows the answer to that already.
Seconds pass before I shake him. A strong, healthy handshake so at odds with those eyes. “I am. How do you know me?”
“Your for-sale signs are on his lawn. Branigan Realty, if I’m correct.”
A rational explanation that also tells me he’s been driving past Asher’s house.
“And you must be Juno’s daughter,” he says to Cora. “I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”
The girl nods like she’s star-struck and swallows her gum. “You know my mother?”
“Everyone in Salma’s Hope knows Juno Newlin of Goldilocks. Has she mentioned me?”
“Nothing good,” Cora says. “She says your casino is a den of vice.”
“One’s vice is another’s pleasure,” Resnik says.
“What do you want?” I say.
“Ms. Whipple, why so anxious? I’m a well-known resident of Salma’s Hope. I’m out for a weekend stroll, bothering no one.”
Sure. Or he’s been following us.
The clerk clears her throat. She’s done with the final bill. “We don’t take American Express,” she tells me absently, her dreamy gaze still on Resnik.
I pay for the flowers with a credit card Asher let me borrow, and I notice Resnik’s eyes tracking the card, taking in details, as I hand it to the clerk.
After paying, I put my hands on the cart and give Resnik my best go-away look.
He blocks my way. “These flowers are for Asher Wade?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Only curious,” Resnik says. “He and I used to be friends, almost like brothers. Almost. And you did use his card.”
“The flowers are for his house.”
Resnik doesn’t question this at all. He smiles. “How is Mr. Wade? I thought he was unwell. Now he’s growing flowers?”
I try to stammer out something, but Asher was right. I am a terrible liar.
Suddenly Resnik laughs, and even when he laughs, his eyes are blank. “Mr. Wade’s private affairs are no business of mine. Allow me to help you with this.”
He shoulders me aside so fast, he’s pushing the cart through the door before I can react.
Cora, who’s normally very observant, notices nothing wrong. Creepy eyes aside, Resnik seems the perfect gentleman.
We follow him to my Beetle.
“How did you know that’s my car?”
“Educated guess,” Resnik says smoothly. “The car suits you. Am I wrong?”
I look at the blocky SUVs parked next to mine and look back to him. He’s not wrong, but he’s also a liar.
I pop the trunk.
Resnik loads the pots carefully, followed by the bag of garden soil. His hands may look soft, but he lifts that bag like a feather. It must weigh forty pounds and it’d taken both Cora and me to heft it onto the cart.
“Thanks,” Cora says.
“Not at all,” Resnik says, eyeing her up and down. “Look me up when you get older. A beauty like you would fit right in at Lucky Cherries.” He glances at me as he speaks.
“Cora,” I say, “go wait in the car.”
“But—”
“Please,” I say.
She makes a huffing sound but listens, slamming the door shut.
“Is anything the matter?” Resnik says.
“Stay away from her.”
“You know nothing about me, Ms. Whipple.”
“I know enough.” The words leave me before I can think.
Resnik’s eyebrows crease slightly. “What do you think you know?”
“You own a casino.”
“Ever been?”
“I don’t gamble.”
“We are all gamblers,” he says. “But some of us don’t know it. You’re gambling those flowers will help sell a house.”
I struggle to hold his gaze.
“Don’t believe everything Mr. Wade tells you,” Resnik says. “He’s paranoid. He blames me for the untimely demise of his sister. Does he not?”
Resnik edges closer as the blood drains from my face. I bump against the trunk, a cold knot twisting in my belly.
“I cared for Priscilla.” Resnik’s voice is soft as a prayer. “Asher’s the one who abandoned her. He wanted revenge for Eugene so much he abandoned the one person he still had left. Asher Wade is a bloodthirsty maniac, Ms. Whipple. You should ask him what he did in Afghanistan.”
“Back off,” I snap.
Resnik takes a step back.
“Don’t come near me ever again,” I say.
“Salma’s Hope is my town. I go where I please.” He clutches my hand and brings it to his mouth, his soft lips grazing my fingers before he lets go. “Give my regards to Asher.”
He leaves.
I’m trembling.
Resnik strolls to a red pickup truck parked at the curb and climbs into the passenger side. The truck drives off in the other direction.
Minutes pass before I can feel my fingers again, my heart slamming into my ribs. I get in my Beetle. The sound of Cora chewing gum seems very loud.
“What are you so uptight about?” she says.
“Cora, Verne Resnik is dangerous.”
“Mom has been telling me that for years, but you saw him, Nat. How is he dangerous?”
“He’s dangerous, trust me.”
The teenager snorts. “That’s what Asher says too. But dangerous how?”
There’s nothing I can say without mentioning Asher’s sister or my feelings for him. I would believe Asher Wade over Resnik any day.
I can see Resnik as a murderer. Maybe not the kind who chases you through the woods with a chainsaw, but the kind who’d lure you to his home and slip some pills into your drink before he wraps his hands around your neck.
“Change of plans,” I tell Cora. “I’m dropping you off at your mother’s and going to Asher’s alone.”
“Why?”
“For your own safety.”
Cora complains, but when we reach the back lot of Goldilocks, I call Juno and tell her what happened, and she rushes out to take Cora into her arms.
“You did the right thing,” Juno says. “Tell Ash what happened.”
“Definitely.”
I drive away, following the signs out of town toward that lonely road with two houses. I try to clear my mind. The buildings of Salma’s Hope fade from view as I enter
the woods that sprawl outside town. My fingers won’t stop shaking.
Two red pickups swerve into my rearview mirror and follow at a distance. My chest freezes. There were no turns back there.
They must’ve been waiting in the trees.
I hold the wheel with sweaty palms and floor the gas, but my Beetle can’t outrun them. The trucks gain on me until I see their license plates, a jumble of letters and numbers I might remember for later if I weren’t going out of my mind with terror.
The lead truck screeches into the opposite lane. I glance at the side mirror. Objects are closer than they appear.
A man’s driving. He speeds past me, then veers back into my lane, slowing and slowing. When I try to change lanes, he imitates every turn I make, blocking me behind him. In my rearview mirror, the second truck closes until we’re bumper to bumper.
They want me to pull over.
I reach for my phone, about to dial, then feel a bump and my belt goes tight. Another bump, harder this time. The truck behind me is ramming. I lose my grip on the phone.
Horns go off.
Stay calm. I’ll do that thing I’ve seen in movies, where you pretend to stop, and when the cops or bad buys or whoever’s chasing you get out of their car, you race off and laugh in their face.
I pull onto the shoulder, sandwiched between the two pickups. The truck in front parks slightly askew, stopping me from a movie escape. A wall of trees along the road cuts off that direction. Sweat runs down my neck.
I’m all alone out here and no one will find my body.
Breathe, Natalie. You don’t know what they want.
Maybe I can talk my way through.
Four men get out of the trucks. The rear two appear ordinary, but the two in front are anything but.
One looks like a lumberjack from some nightmare, with a beard down to his chest framing brutal features. He’s blocky with muscle. Rolled-up sleeves on his shirt reveal arms covered in coarse hair.
The guy beside him is lean and wears a cowboy hat. He sneers at me, long fingers walking over my hood before he knocks on my window.
“Step out of the car,” he says. “We’d like a word with you on behalf of Mr. Resnik.”
Nowhere to go but out.
9
On Fire
Asher
I spray fertilizer on the lawn we cleared. The front of my family home hasn’t looked this good since Pris died.
This is Natalie’s doing. She has a way of seeing the good, beautiful things in this world and turning them real.
My lawn feels like our lawn.
She’s put in so much work over the past month, showing me how much of a perfectionist she can be. I bet she’s agonizing over which flowers to get at the florist’s, and I smile.
But she’s an hour late.
I look over the grass again, and my thoughts drift to the way her shorts stretch over her ass when she bends down to pluck out some weed. She drives me insane. There’ve been a few times she caught me gawking, and she’d blush before giving me this spitfire look like I done fucked up again.
“Keep it together,” I tell myself.
I hear a car.
Her yellow Beetle comes into view and turns onto my driveway. Relief fills me.
Natalie gets out in a flowery dress, the skirt reaching midthigh, long enough to keep my thoughts decent, but short enough to have them wandering.
This girl is a bundle of trouble.
Her hair is down too, blowing around her face when a breeze comes in. I’m used to seeing her with a ponytail, but she’s beautiful either way.
God she’s beautiful. Like a little nugget of cuteness I want to bite and kiss. That makes no fucking sense, but I’m beyond sense.
I’m all smiles and ready to help unload the car when I see how pale she is, the way her hands shake.
I rush forward.
She falls into my arms and bursts into tears. Rubbing her back, I take Natalie into the house and help her to the couch. A whistle sends Hansel into guard mode by the door.
“Are you hurt?” I say.
“N-No.”
I kiss her forehead, hugging her hard, then force myself to peel back. I sit down and hold her close. “What happened?”
She looks up with puffy eyes and sniffles before the words come out. Resnik had harassed her at the flower store. He must’ve been stalking her all morning. That slick fuck introduced himself, tried to charm Natalie, but she wasn’t having it. Cora had been present too.
That makes me doubly furious.
Natalie was coming back to tell me what had happened, and Resnik’s thugs stopped her on the road outside town. Four of the fuckers ganged up on her. I grind my teeth together, my instincts torn between comforting her and ripping those men apart.
“They touch you?” I say.
“They made me watch.”
“Watch what?”
“They smashed the flowers, Asher. Smashed them on the roadside. This big guy with hairy arms ripped open the soil bag and dumped it in my trunk. He said if I stay in town, they’d do the same to me.” She shudders. “There was another man there who wore a cowboy hat. He was the worst, he did this—”
She shows me the tattered ends of her hair. She says the cowboy took a knife out, grabbed her ponytail, and sliced off the end.
Now I know why her hair’s down.
“The knife he used,” I say, “what did it look like?”
“Long and sharp. The handle was weird, it looked like bone.”
“Ivory. I know the man, his knife too. He touch you anywhere else?”
“No. He said he’d keep my hair as a memento, and the next time Resnik sends him, he’ll cut off my . . .”
“What?” I growl.
Her shoulders tremble under my hands. “Lips.”
I hug her tightly. “You’re safe now.”
“Who are they, Asher?”
“The hairy one is called Sledge, a bouncer at Lucky Cherries. The cowboy with the knife is Titus Quinton, a sadistic little fuck and head of security under Resnik.”
Natalie flinches. “Titus Quinton?”
“You heard of him?”
She whimpers. I rub her back, stroking her shoulder, my nose in her hair.
“Tell you later,” she says. “How do you know them?”
“I have a source inside the casino. He gave me an overview of who’s who in Resnik’s world. Titus is probably the one who punctured your tires, left the dead fox. It’s his style.”
Natalie clutches her messenger bag like a stuffed animal. I run my fingers along the snipped ends of her hair as fury builds at the base of my spine.
This is my fault.
I got her involved. I let her get involved.
I should’ve never told her anything about Pris. I should’ve sent her away, and why the fuck didn’t I?
Because I let myself get close.
Because deep down, I wanted this woman to stay so I can see her smile that warms my heart every morning. And I’d failed to protect her just like I’d failed to protect my sister.
I get my phone and call Chief Dunkel on his private line. “You busy?”
“Paperwork,” he says. “A shit ton of paperwork. What can I help you with?”
Dunkel’s easygoing tone stokes my rage, though I know I’m being unreasonable. “Resnik’s men hurt Natalie. Can you get here?”
He takes a second to answer. “Hurt bad?”
“Just get over here.”
I end the call. Bringing the police, even if only one man, would draw more attention, but I’m beyond discretion now.
Resnik has declared war.
Every fiber in my body is humming, twitching.
I felt the same way two years ago when I got that long-distance phone call in Afghanistan, from Juno, her trembling voice telling me Pris’s body had been found drifting in the river. I managed to keep my face together until I got back to my tent and sank to my knees. I knew right then Pris didn’t drown herself.
&nb
sp; Like I know now.
Resnik hurt Natalie.
But this time I’m not seven thousand miles away on the other side of the world. I’m right fucking here.
This time I’ll hit back.
Chief Dunkel shows up at my door forty minutes later. I trust him to be alone with Natalie because he’s the law, he’s old, and he has a reputation in town for being straight-laced to a fault. A widower with no children, he doesn’t go to bars, doesn’t date. Frowns upon couples showing affection in public if they don’t have rings on their fingers.
I wouldn’t trust any other man to be in a room with Natalie.
“She okay?” the chief asks.
“Resnik’s people put their hands on her.”
“Shit.”
“Stay with her for two hours,” I say.
“And where the hell are you going?” Dunkel stares at me when I don’t answer. “Goddammit, Wade.”
I lead him to the living room.
Natalie sits up, her eyes now dry. “Asher?”
“Be back soon,” I promise. “Chief Dunkel will keep you safe.”
In the basement I grab a 9mm, tucking it into my jeans. I don’t plan on using it, not yet, unless one of those fuckers gives me a reason.
When I return upstairs, Natalie is on her feet.
“Asher, don’t. So he snipped my hair, it’ll grow back. We can get more flowers. I can clean out the dirt. Don’t go.”
I put my arm around her waist and kiss her right in front of Dunkel, and when I pull away, her face is bright red.
“They hurt you,” I growl. “They need to know there are consequences.”
“Think about what you’re doing,” Dunkel says. “There may be bystanders at the casino.”
“Casino doesn’t open for business until six,” I say curtly. “Only people there will be Resnik’s security. Keep Natalie safe,” I tell him.
“Wait,” she says.
Her voice is the only thing that can stop me, and I wait.
She puts her hand on my chest. “Be careful, don’t kill anyone.”
My forehead touches hers. “I’m gonna have a word with them,” I say. “Only words.”
Then I pull away and go to the garage and I get in my Mustang. With the windows lowered, I roar down the road toward Lucky Cherries casino.